


Iain Glen in ANCHOR ME, a meta

by bellahadar, clarasimone



Category: Anchor Me, British actor - Fandom, Game of Thrones (TV), Iain Glen - Fandom
Genre: Acting, Analysis, Anchor Me - Freeform, Character Analysis, Childhood Trauma, Eros & Thanatos, Erotica, Essays, F/M, Film Aesthetics analysis, Meta, Narrative Analysis, Psychoanalysis, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Spoilers, film analysis, non-fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-28
Updated: 2020-03-28
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:14:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23343049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellahadar/pseuds/bellahadar, https://archiveofourown.org/users/clarasimone/pseuds/clarasimone
Summary: An in-depth analysis of ANCHOR ME (2000), a made-for-tv UK production starring Iain Glen (Ser Jorah Mormont in GoT) discussing the what and the how of its thematic tropes, motifs, symbols, stylistic figures and acting.
Relationships: Iain Glen/Original Character(s)
Kudos: 6
Collections: IAIN GLEN metas





	Iain Glen in ANCHOR ME, a meta

**Author's Note:**

> I’m not sure why Bellahadar and I chose this film to begin our series of metas on Iain Glen’s work, but it soon became evident that this production resonated deeply and personally with us… for reasons explained in the End notes. 
> 
> Though ANCHOR ME is lacking in budget and directorial flourishes (made-for-tv productions had not come into their own in 2000), its screenplay, narrative structure and performances, by IG especially, amply make up for it. We have rarely come across a narrative showing such a deep empathy for human frailties and understanding of the effect of family trauma and the ways we can heal from them.
> 
> We hope you enjoy our 4-hand analysis. Because this is a thorough analysis, it is of course full of spoilers. But they should make you want to run see this film if you haven't already. All moodboards and screencaps by Bellahadar.

**_PARADISE LOST_ ** **and _THE RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL SON_**

**Bella:**

If your favorite actor is Iain Glen, you don’t expect something easy and lightweight. And _Anchor Me_ is no exception. Dr. Freud and Dr. Jung would be proud. The film is about “Lost Paradise”. About a man, who can’t be happy in his adult life because of some horrible thing that occurred in his childhood. It’s about trauma. And as therapists say, it’s not the trauma itself that breaks us; it’s unresolved trauma. It traps us in that period, and in that moment. Nathan was a teenager when his younger brother Michael died tragically, an accidental death his family believes he could have prevented, and a big part of Nathan’s soul, his personality, remains stuck in that era, not able to get over the trauma, returning to that incident again and again, like an anchored ship. Anchor me… And we can clearly see that Nathan sometimes acts like a teenager: when he decides to “pause” his relationship with his wife and live apart for a while, he expects SHE’LL be the one to tell their son, not HIM. He is clearly afraid of responsibility.

Nathan’s trauma IS unresolved: after the death of his youngest brother, his parents refused to speak about the event. They avoided the subject, tried to resume their lives as if nothing happened, but implicitly, the feeling was: this DID happen. Only Nathan tried again and again to speak about it, to make things clear, and to get the confirmation that it wasn’t his fault. But nobody responded. Even when he started crying at the dinner table, as a boy, repeating “It wasn’t my fault” - his mother just told him, poker faced: “Nathan, go get a tissue and return when you’re ok.”

Nathan feels guilty about his brother’s death. Well, it’s normal for children to feel guilty about bad things that happen in their lives. But somehow - his parents felt he was guilty too. And that is not normal at all. Because of this dysfunctional situation, Nathan yearned from a young age to leave his parents’ house, and he did - went to London and became an architect. Becoming once more a “bad son”, because he then rarely visited his parents. Given how his father and brother treat him when he does come back, it’s no wonder he stays/stayed away. And Nathan’s brother Billy, of course, completes the “prodigal son” narrative: he stayed home, was the dutiful brother, and of course resents his older brother’s success and the effect he has on their mother when he visits.

**Clarasimone:**

Bella, I love your notion of _Paradise Lost_ and if I were to paraphrase your observations and maybe add to them, I would talk about how IG’s character Nathan and his childhood sweetheart Jackie try to regain this lost paradise as Adam & Eve.

Nathan especially is very nostalgic when he comes back. I love the details that communicate this. He’s not “allowed” into the family house (he rings, no one is there) BUT he knows how to get in regardless, and he’s very excited to find the key under the flowerpot (love his smile and his exclaiming in French: _Voilà!_ ;-) It’s like entering back into the Garden of Eden uninvited, isn’t it? And he almost tiptoes through the house like one does through a secret garden. When he peeps into a bedroom, he compulsively opens his hand, his nervousness showing through (thank you for reminding me **bellahadar** ). He double takes on family pictures showcasing past happiness. He enters his bedroom like one enters Ali Baba’s cavern, with joy and awe.

Do you recall when he finds his old artist’s crayons and material? He caresses his old tattered tools. He WAS so happy as a young person before the tragedy. And the next thing he finds (a fishing bubble) gets him to remember Jackie, and his own sexual and romantic awakening. His nostalgia and yearning for _Paradise Lost_ is palpable when we see him not being shy about telling Jackie how fondly he remembers their time together. His past is so very near the surface. One scene in particular shows this beautifully. Nathan and Jackie are walking in the green field (Eden) and though Jackie has just told Nathan that she never indulges in reminiscing, Nathan opens up to her. The moment starts at 33M50: Nathan playfully attacks Jackie to tickle her, a spontaneous but love-hungry attempt at intimacy. Then, the music starts and the mood shifts. Nathan goes into himself and tells a moved Jackie he remembers how proud he was to be in the football team as a kid, knowing he was going to walk her home and his mom was going to make them a special treat for tea. IG’s face and voice soften so much then (he moves me to tears) and he says: “I remember thinking: I’m as happy now, as I’m ever gonna be.” And then we learn he was just 8 years old! My God, such prescience! And his acting, dear God…

He does it again, on the construction site, before the characters run off to make love. When Nathan tells Jackie how sometimes he thinks he’s happy and then suddenly he’ll feel this heaviness, in the pit of his stomach, and he _knows_ , and he _remembers_. My God, that childhood trauma not giving him one moment’s peace, you know. God how I feel for him… And how AMAZING he is delivering those lines. His pause, the tears welling and his voice breaking and getting lower… Kill me Ser.

So much pain. No wonder his character suffered a form of arrested development when tragedy shattered Eden… to the point of pushing him to exile himself. Nathan is, in effect, banished from Paradise, pushed away from the green countryside community where he grew up and fell in love, and I felt so deeply for him and Jackie as they tried to recapture what they once felt. But not as a futile act of juvenile make-believe (like recapturing one’s youth) but as a healing process, in order to actually feel complete. Their young love was cut in the bud and they want to achieve the closure they were never allowed… this closure being tightly linked to the closure Nathan is looking for with his family, his mom in particular.

I thought it was one of the many deep truths and daringly original propositions of the screenplay to have Jackie tell Nathan, up front, that she wants this affair between them _because they never got the ending they deserved._ It’s so very surprising to see her being so level-headed, and say she’s **initiating** this because she wants to **end** things between them, **not pursue** them. What a mind-blowing concept :-) It has nothing to do with sexual or emotional frustration on her part. She loves her husband (though one may sigh at the thought; see the end notes). So, it has nothing to do with him, Billy. It has everything to do with _her_. _She_ needs this experience with Nathan to close a door that needs to be shut for her to move on with her life. A life without regrets. And, of course, it’s a similar experience for Nathan. The fact that the intimacy he longs for with Jackie is not rooted in lust is well communicated through casting. Jackie is played by an actress who has a very homey, girl next door look. It’s Nathan’s wife who is exotically beautiful. So, truly, Nathan yearns for Jackie not because of some sexual mid-life crisis but because he needs to rekindle their intimacy to recapture who he was, who he is, and to move forward from some kind of arrested development.

 **Bella** , you added that Nathan’s plea for a break from his wife, in order to find himself, and sort himself out, is therefore not the usual cop-out, but a very real need, and I agree. The film makes sure we understand that Nathan loves Sarah. There is no one else in Nathan’s life when he asks for a break. Or, if there is, well, it’s him. He needs to find, not another woman, but himself… to find Paradise again.

Also, I love the fact that though Nathan must learn to become a more mature man, he is the only one brave enough to try and try again to make his siblings talk about the incident and do it with sensitivity (like the artist that he is: nice touch to have made him an artist, an architect !). I never perceived it as an egoistic impulse on his part, not the way IG plays him. There’s even something of the valiant knight in him! Nathan and Jackie’s first kiss, for instance, comes after the scene where Billy is especially cruel and abusive to his wife (throwing mashed potatoes to her face). The kiss is Nathan’s way to rescue Jackie from the humiliation she has just suffered at the hands of her husband. It’s like Adam nurturing Eve.

Also, I think Nathan’s courage rubs off Jackie when, after telling him she never recalls their childhood crush, she comes clean and admits she remembers _everything_ about it. That was such a beautiful moment. The actress was shaking as she was communicating this: “I remember every second! (…) I remember the way your fingers felt on my skin and your lips on my body and the way your mouth tasted…. and I remember how ecstatic I was just being next to you and just to breathe the same air as you!“ OMG… That, again, is very much akin a chimeric dialogue which Adam and Eve could have shared after their banishment from Eden.

And Nathan deserves this testimony, this show of love from Jackie, you know? It’s the first time in the film when someone from his past tells him he mattered, he had value, he brought them joy. I’m crying as I’m writing this… How not to feel for Nathan? Especially when we learn, from the father, at the end, as he spills the truth to Nathan’s wife, that Nathan did not imagine the hurt he was inflicted. His mother DID push him away. Though her mind knew better, her whole being thought her son responsible and acted accordingly. Obviously, she suffered from this as much as Nathan did. It’s terrible because she’s a good person, but these things happen in real life, don’t they? The unspeakable happens. And the film does not shy away from these truths, while showing one way out of them, one way to heal. One way to recapture paradise.

**_EROS VS THANATOS_ **

**Clarasimone:**

One of my favorite things about the film is the way it uses the juxtaposition of _Eros and Thanatos_ , Love & Death, to build the narrative and the characters’ arcs. It’s made abundantly clear in all love scenes of the film.

First, the moment of the “original sin”: Michael dies because both his parents and his older brother Nathan were too involved in romantic trysts to notice him endangering himself. His parents kiss under the fireworks, and Nathan gets distracted by Jackie. And it’s THE great injustice in Nathan’s life that his parents should have displaced their own (never avowed) guilt unto him. They believe he should have kept an eye on his brother, but they were there! It was their responsibility to make sure all their children be safe. Eros distracted them but only Eros’ pull on Nathan was considered punishable. How unfair and tragic. But how typical to see this type of displacement, isn’t it?

Then, of course, Nathan and Jackie make love _where Michael died_. The symbolism is overpowering, and of course deeply cathartic.

And, finally, they make love again, so joyously, so beautifully _while Nathan’s mother’s dies_!

The same is true of the teenagers who also come together in almost perfect synchronization with their adult counterpart.

Fighting death with sex, this unstoppable life force, there is nothing more primal, more beautiful. I was floored by this proposition! And IG excels in expressing this, doesn’t he? :-) Not only in the raw emotional nakedness of the first sex scene when he cries… but later through the sensual hunger he demonstrates when he lunges for Jackie, devouring her with open-mouthed kisses, his tongue darting out and his hand digging under her panties when they try to make love in their enchanted cottage. It’s a wonderfully playful moment how the erotic fire of their embrace is thwarted by Nathan’s chili infected fingers come to burn Jackie’s intimate flesh. From spicy food to spicy sex; this scene almost prefigures DELICIOUS ;-) It’s perfectly hedonistic and life-affirming. And a few minutes later, IG excels again at showing the joy in sexual prowess when he smiles a bit devilishly into Jackie’s eyes as his thrusts lift her to make her climax. It comes at 1H31H00-02, just before they kiss. And all of this, all of this amazing show of emotion and joy and sexiness occurring while Nathan’s mother is dying. OMG! The contrast is heart shattering!

I thought that it was also immensely brave of the screenwriter, who manages to make us root for the adulterers, to then seemingly punish them by having them miss the mother’s death because their tryst occurs at the same time. I literally screamed with my hand on my mouth when I realized the parallel. Nathan is not there when his mother forgives him! And missing this crucial family event threatens to plunge the lovers in an even deeper experience of shame and regret than the accidental death of Michael… In the final act of the film, I was reeling! But you see them surmounting this new ordeal with great emotional courage, and the whole family actually benefits from having to go through this ultimate blow and "hour of truth”. Wow. I’ve really rarely seen such a mature, wise, empathic look at the human heart. Everyone in this film is multidimensional and flawed and terribly human.

 **Bella** , you have this esoteric theory (your words ;-) that by making love, Nathan changes the paradigm of his life and enables/births his mother’s pardon during the parallel montage… whereas I felt the editing rather suggested that the delirious mother seemed to dream her son’s liberation ;-) It’ll be interesting to see what they ladies think…

**_MIRROR EFFECTS_ **

**Clarasimone:**

There are multiple mirror effects in the film, which beautifully complexify the narrative structure and inform the heroes’ arcs. The main one occurs between two generation of lovers: Nathan and Jackie, and their respective children, Michael and Cassie. The first time I perused the film, I did it by fast-forwarding (of course, to get to the love scenes ;-) and I thought I was seeing flashbacks when we see the teenage lovers, when, in fact, we’re seeing Michael and Cassie in the present tense of the film. In a way, they are reenacting Nathan and Jackie’s childhood flirt. It’s a great narrative device, especially to show the pull of fatality. Because, how foreboding to see Michael and Cassie’s own affair spiral down into possible tragedy in the final act of the film, while Nathan and Jackie’s tryst is also being discovered. All their fates seem intrinsically linked because somewhere in time, a great injustice occurred.

Did you notice that the moment the two couples’ story almost come crashing into each other occurs perfectly mid-point into the film? I rarely do this, but I checked the time code and sure enough, we’re perfectly at the half mark in the narrative when the kids see their adult counterparts make love on the construction site. It’s actually the original ending of part 1 but our copy reedited the film into one seamless work. In this moment, the kids get to experience a fall from grace. THE most important moment in all of their lives in this story. How disappointed Michael and Cassie are at seeing their parents as adulterers… and how upset they look at having lost their innocence. Because it is a “textbook _lacanian_ mirror phase moment” to have them cease to be kids the very moment they get to witness the primal scene…

Of course, the moment is also life-altering for Nathan and Jackie, who never truly consummated their love for each other when they were kids and get to, finally, but on the very site of Michael’s death. The symbolism isn’t lost on us: their cathartic sex scene occurs where the original sin/trauma of the family took place, and where Nathan’s development came to a stop. Maybe we can see hope in the fact that this place isn’t a graveyard (the original barn) but the site of something being constructed anew. And so, of course, IG’s character would be crying as he finally makes love to Jackie! I couldn’t understand why when I fast-forwarded the film, but he’s both mourning his brother and celebrating life, finally making love to the girl he was forced to leave behind and, most of all, reconnecting with who he is, or trying to be!…

**Bella:**

…and because he’s returning to himself. To that teenager, who was SO HAPPY before his brother’s death… It’s probably why Nathan doesn’t disgust us but why, on the contrary, we sympathize with him very much.

It’s also interesting how, when Michael and Cassy see Nathan and Jackie having sex – it’s the boy who can’t handle it and runs away. How do you think, why? Why not the girl? ( **clarasimone:** later on, I proposed a metaphorical answer: that line which Ygritte tells Jon, “Girls see more blood than boys!” so of course Cassie is better equipped to handle this ;-) Oh, Cassy understands her mother very well, I think. The way she’s looking at her uncle, a bit provocatively, calling him Nathan instead of “uncle Nathan”, trying her young awakening sexual charms on him - she finds him very attractive… She even tells her mother “I reckon you married the wrong one” after asking “How come Nathan is better looking than dad?”

Though Nathan and Jackie long for inner catharsis, and not simply for physical pleasure, the relationship between their children, Cassy and Michael, is clearly about sex, the awakening of it, the irresistible pull and force of it. After they saw their respective parents making _it_ \- it kinda gave them permission to do the same, it opened this door for them. They couldn’t forget what they saw, and when Jackie went “to a friend” on the weekend, and Nathan went “working” - their children knew of course, that these two were secretly getting together. Michael asks: “What do you think they’re doing now”? And Cassy answers: “You KNOW what they are doing now” and, she starts to kiss him…

Interestingly, the next scene shows us Nathan and Jackie NOT doing _it_ (contradicting their respective children), but TALKING… Because, let’s repeat it, their coming together is not about sex per se, but a very therapeutic moment for both of them…

Another mirror effect concerns Sarah, Nathan’s wife, who plays the role of the nurturing spouse/mother which Nathan’s mother should have played but has been unable to for many years now. She’s the one who inspires Nathan to make things right with his mother, and to bring their son Michael along, so he can learn what lies behind the heritage of his namesake. And, it’s a wonderful testament to Sarah’s maturity and level of empathy that, though she is deeply hurt by Nathan’s tryst with Jackie, she not only forgives him but _understands_ him.

In fact, she understands so much from the first. Triggering the whole story. Later telling Nathan, in a beautiful field of green (Eden again), that she understands why he needs this time away from her. She loves him, but she won’t beg. He must come back whole or not at all.

Of course, she did not guess what the healing process would entail but… near the end of the film, when she confronts Jackie, what really gets to her is not the infidelity but learning that the reason Nathan did what he did was that he needed to recapture how he felt before Michael’s tragedy. So Sarah was right, all along, and in that moment, where she cries the hardest, she does so because she feels the depth of Nathan’s pain… and her own too, at realizing that this means she never knew her husband as a truly happy person. All she had access to, was this deeply injured man.

Sarah’s moment of epiphany comes soon after Nathan mother’s death, who herself lived a similar epiphany since she was able to acknowledge Michael’s passing in her delirium. The woman dies peacefully… and Sarah knows joy when, having mended her relationship with Nathan, she knows he’ll come back to her as a happy, whole, person.

**HOW STYLE INFORMS DISCOURSE**

**Clarasimone:**

Though it chagrines me that this profound and nuanced work is “trapped” in the shape and form of tv-movie aesthetics, there are nice cinematic moments that do inform and enhanced the discourse and performances, and they merit to be singled out.

One of them comes very early in the film. The scene occurs after Nathan gets the phone call informing him of his mother’s dire condition. We don’t know what he hears but we understand, from his expression and the cut to a flashback, that something terrible has happened.

That flashback is interesting for many reasons: it gives us access to Nathan’s interiority and therefore establishes him as the main protagonist, especially because it’s shot in pure subjective POV (a rare instance) and the mise-en-scene insists on symbolic elements: the town’s church is being repaired (links to the film’s biblical references?) and the scaffolds possibly foreshadow Nathan trying to repair his family, and becoming an architect (to repair and construct ? the wheel goes round). The construction workers whistle at Nathan’s mother, which sexualizes her, and I like the fact that the character is/was therefore not simply a mother but a woman. And that Nathan was exposed to this. It’s not developed and does not impact the narrative much but, being a parent AND a sexual being is clearly something that inhabits Nathan’s psyche.

The most important aspect of the flashback of course, has to do with how Nathan’s mother is caring, how she helps him when he falls from his bicycle and smiles lovingly at him to calm his tears. It’s the mother he lost after the death of Michael. It’s the mother he longs for. It’s the feeling of being loved and safe that he was robbed of at a crucial time in his life. When we exit the flashback, Nathan’s wife impresses on him that he could use this opportunity (going to see his mom) to mend things with her. His fear to commit to this “mission” is well communicated when the camera then dollies into IG’s face. A rare event in the film, composed mainly of shot counter-shots and very functional, invisible cam movements.

A second dolly-in occurs much later, when Nathan suffers as he explains how his mother won’t address Michael’s death: “She’s dying, and she won’t talk about it!” The two dolly-ins bookend Sarah’s insistence that he broach the subject to his mother.

There’s another nice little cinematic moment soon after the first reminiscing scene between Nathan and Jackie: when the camera first captures her, in profile, looking out the window as she does the dishes and there’s this pan to the right showing Nathan just looking at her. All this time, and unbeknownst to us, he was gazing at her longingly :-)

Other nice use of camera movement:

There’s a dolly-in on Jackie the first time she says “We never had an ending. I want an ending.” It marks the moment, obviously, and helps us engrave it in our memory.

There’s another dolly-in when Jackie prepares to tell Nathan that his mother died. This too acts like a bookend to the earlier shot of him getting the phone call informing him of his mom’s illness. I’m glad the director took the time to shoot these moments like this. I just wish there were more of them…

For example, he really was inspired when Nathan rejoins his dad after the mother’s death, and we’ve seen the older man caress and smell his wife’s clothes. A loving moment which, alas, Nathan does not see, as you so justly pointed out **Bella**. Their reunion is shot in one take and it creates a wonderful emotional tension, suspense and release. It goes on for about a minute and a half at 1H45M22 - 1H46M51. The shot starts on the father’s hands packing his wife’s belongings, while Nathan appears in the background, out of focus, coming up the stairs. He comes into the bedroom, they speak, Nathan tries to help his dad who’s too distraught to register Nathan’s love and pain, and then, the director has this wonderful idea: he makes the father walk left, and tracks with him, leaving Nathan behind, who disappears from the frame. The father speaks and speaks and then he turns around and pauses. He’s seeing Nathan. We don’t. But his silence creates a moment of suspense which shatters when the father comes back to his son, the camera tracking once more… revealing IG in tears! Wow! And, bonus: Nathan is holding his mom’s yellow raincoat, the one from his childhood flashback! The happy flashback when she smiled and cared for him as he cried. UGHHHHH my God. And the way IG cries with abandon, chocking on the word “mum,” and the way his father embraces him, with his whole body engulfing him like a papa bear. Wow!

Final detail: I love how one of the last scenes of the film is a flashback to _Paradise Found_ : the 3 brothers with young Jackie running in the green near the flowing river on a golden sunny day. Though it shows the past, the scene has the power to impress our mind as _emotionally occurring now_. The ghosts are happy :-) And then we cut to another bookend scene: Nathan and Michael in the car, but going back to London, their faces all battered but smiling, and in harmony as father and son. Beautiful!

**THE ONE REALLY ANNOYING WEAKNESS? ;-)**

We mentioned how Nathan’s brother Billy completes the Return of the Prodigal Son trope of the narrative. Watching the film, Bella and I were acutely aware that we were supposed to feel for Nathan’s brother and though one can accept the proposition –it makes sense, he was so dutiful– our heart couldn’t. Because the film fails to give the character enough introspective moments to make us feel for him, truly. Actually, he only gets one scene that shows him as an exceptional person, when he reads to his younger kids. This lack, plus the filmmakers’ decision to have Billie humiliate Jackie twice, through a form of public spousal abuse (the mashed potatoes and the beer throwing) just made us shut down. The filmmakers were possibly trying to stretch the envelope, to see how far they could go in showing this brother’s faults while still making us understand how Jackie can love him, regardless, and forgive him. But it didn’t work for us. We believe that if they redid the film today, they would either balance the brother a bit better or have Jackie leave him at the end. But not for Nathan. Leave him to be self-partnered ;-)

***

**Author's Note:**

> Notes on the personal “anchors” we felt with this production:
> 
> Bella has experienced the heartaches that come with the “Return of the Prodigal Child”; and I have experienced the healing process which IG goes through in the film, being intimate with someone else than my life companion in order to find myself and feel whole. Can we call this being unfaithful, when it has everything to do with finding faith in oneself? The film turns this question into a beautiful and heartfelt narrative.


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